Mower Cooking

The five of us Mower girls would love to live in a row of neighboring houses on a cute little street, but we don't. We're not even all in the same state. Since we can't just run down the street with a pan full of our latest culinary discovery to share, we keep this blog as our virtual "family row". Here we can share the nifty and yummy recipes we come across with each other and pretend we're all enjoying it together.

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When it comes to staying on the wagon with eating Low-Carb/High-Fat, I find that having good snacks on hand is key. One easy way to beat sweet cravings and keep the munchies under control is to eat some Fat Bomb. I know, it's not exactly the most appetizing name, but these babies really do work. I often find that I'm not terribly hungry for breakfast and will wait to eat until lunch. If I get hungry before lunch time I'll grab a bite of fat bomb to tide me over.

What You Do:
Let your butter and cream cheese come to room temperature. Put it in a mixing bowl with the flavorings of your choice and beat until fluffy like frosting.
At this point you have a couple of serving options. You can just put the whole mess in a pint jar in the fridge and scoop out a spoonful any time you feel like it. Another option is to scoop it into bite size piles on a waxed paper lined baking sheet and freeze. Store in an airtight container in the freezer and let soften for a moment before you eat it. You could also spread the mixture into an 8 in baking dish lined with wax paper, freeze until solid enough to cut, then cut into bite sized pieces and store in the freezer.

Since several of us Mower ladies are trying to follow a more low-carb lifestyle, I thought I'd share some of our favorite recipes. I'd thought about typing up posts for each individual meal, but then I realized that most of them are already available online anyways so why do extra work?! So, without further ado, here are 45 of our favorite Low-Carb/High-Fat recipes.

Key:
+Recipe I will type up a post and link here asap
*Favorites
^Quick/easy

Breakfast:Eggs are the easiest LC breakfast, but I have eaten so many of those that I can barely choke them down anymore. I often skip breakfast and just have a mid-morning snack to tide me over until lunch. When I do eat breakfast, here are some things that I eat:

*+^LC Latte (No coffee. I have heavily adapted this recipe to fit what I typically have on hand, I'll try to make a post about this soon.)Breakfast BallsLC Waffles (with whipped cream and fruit or sugar-free Toriani syrup)Devilled EggsLC Pancakes (with sugar-free Toriani syrup, usually vanilla flavor)
^Blueberry smoothie (you can sub whatever kind of berries you have on hand)

Snacks:I find that as long as I have good snacks on hand I can do pretty well staying on the LC wagon. When I'm hungry I'm most likely to give in and grab something I shouldn't, so I use these snacks for a quick boost to keep me going until I can eat a healthy meal.
Nuts (peanuts and roasted/salted pecans are my favorite, just don't eat too many!)

*Cookie Dough Fat Bombs (this is my favorite recipe, but you can make any flavor you want by mixing equal parts cream cheese and butter with whatever flavors/sweeteners you like)

Meat and Cheese Roll Ups (yes, roll a slice of cheese in a slice of lunch meat. Add a squirt of mustard for flavor and/or a smear of mayo for extra satiety.)

Pepperoni Slices
String Cheese

Lunch:For lunch most days we eat a salad with lots of toppings. I typically buy a head each of iceberg and romaine lettuce, as well as a bunch of spinach. Chop it all up and it will stay good in the fridge all week for lunches and sides for dinner. If I'm not eating a salad I'm probably eating leftovers or some tuna with mayo on some LC crackers.To make our salads nice and filling we try to add as much fat as possible while keeping the carbs down to a minimum. Some salad toppings we like are:
Sunflower seeds
Olives
Pepperoni
Sliced lunch meat
Leftover meat from dinner the night before
Cheese (mozzarella, cheddar, Parmesan, a pinch of feta, whatever we have and sometimes a bit of each)
Fried Spam (diced)
Bacon Bits
Peanuts
Roasted pecans
Sliced green onions
Slivers of bell pepper
Tomato
Avocado
Boiled Egg, diced
Cucumber Slices

Sweet Treats:We don't make treats very often anymore, but sometimes you just can't shake the cravings and need a good way to satisfy them without falling off the wagon. Typically when this happens I grab a handful of salted peanuts and a handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips to munch on. If I want to put in a bit more effort here are some other yummy things we've made:Low Carb Chocolate MousseChocolate Brownie Mug Cake

We harvested about half a dozen butternut squashes out of our garden this year, and they are so yummy! My favorite way to eat them is cubed and roasted, they're SO good! I was looking for a way to mix things up an found this recipe for butternut soup. It looked easy and yummy, so I went for it, making a few little tweaks to the recipe here and there. The instructions seem long, but this is not a complicated dish and comes together in an hour or less, even if you have three kids hanging on you or otherwise demanding your attention while you make it (see bonus step).

Basically all you have to do is roast all the veggies, throw everything in the blender, warm it up, and serve. Just in case you want more detail than that, here you go...

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Prepare your garlic head for roasting by slicing the top of it off and
drizzling some oil over it. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, here are some better instructions. Wrap in tinfoil and place in the oven. You want this to cook as long as possible, so get it in first and make sure it's the last things you pull out when they're all done.
3. Put your squash cubes in a bowl, drizzle with a 1-2 TBS oil and sprinkle with herbs of choice and salt/pepper. Toss with a spoon so your cubes are evenly coated in oil. Spread in a single layer on a sheet pan. The goal is to use enough oil that all the surfaces on the squash cubes end up with a light coat of oil, but not so much that you have a puddle of oil in the bottom of the bowl after you toss the squash.
4. Working with one veggie type at a time, follow the same instructions as in step 3 for the potatoes, onions (toss these gently so the layers don't fall apart), and carrots, EXCEPT don't put the herbs on them; just oil, salt, and pepper. I kept my veggie types separate in case the roasting times were different and I needed to pull something out of the oven before the rest were done.
5. Place sheet pan in oven. Roast for 15 minutes. Using a spatula turn all the veggies over and put back in to continue roasting. Check every ten minutes for doneness by stabbing with a fork. If the veggie is soft and easy to pierce then it's done. All of mine were done about the same time, but if yours aren't just take what's done off the pan and put the rest back in.

6. When all your veggies are tender and the smell is so amazing you're about to lose your mind, remove them all from the cookie sheet (Remember that bowl you used to oil them up? It works great to store them all in for a few minutes). While you want some yummy browning on your veggies, if you have any little bits that seem too burned (some of my onion layers got a bit overdone), make sure to discard those. Place the sheet pan over a stove burner turned on to low heat, and pour in a small amount of chicken broth (1/2 cup?). Cook and stir, scraping all the yummy caramelized brown bits off the bottom of the pan. Once you have gotten all the good stuff stirred in, take it off the heat, and pour the goodness into your blender.
7. Remove your garlic head from the oven and unwrap the foil so it can cool enough to work with. You can turn your oven off now.
***Bonus step: Extricate your 5 year old from the exersaucer:

8. Dump your veggies in the blender, along with the celery seed and enough chicken broth/stock to cover everything. If you want a silky smooth soup add them all now, but if you want a bit of texture than reserve a handful of squash cubes. Pulse a few times to break up most of the big chunks, stirring and adding more broth (or milk for added richness) as necessary. Your garlic is probably cool enough to handle now, so squeeze the roasted garlic out of the skin and add those to the blender. Blend until smooth, adding more liquid if desired. If you saved some squash for texture, add those now and pulse until desired texture is reached.
9. If blending your soup has cooled it too much to serve, warm it up in a pot on the stove. Serve with a dollop of sour cream if desired (yum!).

I will admit to never having had a calzone before I made these, but I'm so glad I did! I found this recipe in my favorite Betty Crocker cook book and just had to give it a try. These are pretty easy to make and SO yummy. You can fill them with whatever you have handy and you've got a really yummy dinner ready to go. This filling recipe came from my Betty Crocker cookbook, but we've also used cottage cheese (instead of ricotta), pepperoni, sausage, and pretty much anything else you might put on pizza). Here's a whole page of ideas for ways to make this yummy dinner treat your own.

What you Do (crust):
In large bowl, mix 1 cup of the flour, the sugar, salt, and yeast. Add oil and warm water. Beat with electric mixer on medium speed 3 minutes, scraping bowl requently. Stir in enough remaining flour until dough is soft and leaves sides of bowl. Place dough on lightly floured surface. Knead 5-8 minutes or until dough is smooth and springy. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest 30 minutes. (At this point you could just use this dough to make pizza, but why stop here when you could make calzones?)

What you Do (calzones):
Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease 2 cookie sheets.
Divide dough into 6 equal parts. On lightly floured surface, roll each part into 7-inch circle with floured rolling pin.
Top half of each dough circle with mozzarella cheese, salami, ricotta cheese, basil and tomatoes to within 1 inch of the edge. Sprinkle with fresh ground pepper. Carefully fold dough over filling; pinch edges or press with fork to seal securely.
Place calzones on cookie sheets. Brush with egg. Bake about 25 minutes or until golden brown.

We like to warm up some marinara (or whatever pasta sauce we have handy) and serve it as a dipping sauce. YUM!

These were SO yummy, they taste like something you'd pay good money for in a restaurant. They were also really quick and easy to make! We ate ours with baked potatoes and some fruit cocktail (fancy, I know) and they made a great dinner. I found the recipe here.

What you need:

2 tsp oil

1 TBS rosemary leaf, chopped

1/2 cup chicken broth

1 lb pork tenderloin, cut crosswise into 1/2 inch thick slices

1/2 tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

2 TBS honey

What you do:

Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. While that is warming up, sprinkle the cutlets with rosemary, salt, and pepper.

Add the pork to the pan and cook about 3 minutes per side, or until done. Remove from pan and keep warm.

Combine broth, vinegar, and honey, stirring with a whisk. Add to the pan. You want to scrape the bottom of the pan to get all the yummy browned bits from the meat stirred in. Bring to a boil.

Reduce heat to low and simmer for 6 minutes, or until reduced to 1/3 cup and is thick as syrup. While the vinegar is cooking down, it smells pretty strong. Ethan walked in during this time and asked what the heck I was doing with all the vinegar. I told him it was dinner, and you could tell by his face that he wanted to refuse to have anything to do with whatever I was cooking, but he wisely bit his tongue. He didn't regret that decision.

Once the sauce is reduced and thickened, return the pork to the pan and cook until heated through.

I thought I'd share my favorite trick for speeding up the cooking time for baked potatoes. It's fine to bake potatoes for an hour when you've also got meatloaf or something baking that is going to take just as long, but I hate running the oven for that long when the rest of dinner's only going to take 20 minutes. So, I heat my oven up to at least 400. Scrub the potatoes, and slice in half lengthwise. Carefully score the potato (see above picture), being careful not to cut through the peel. Sprinkle with salt and pepper (also yummy to add garlic or onion powder, or whatever herbs would complement your main dish) and put a few dabs of butter on top of each potato half.

I recently tried out a french recipe I found online. Making the conversions and figuring this out took a few tries, but I finally got it! These cookies are super yummy and once I had the right amounts and consistency figured out, they weren't too hard! I used a post on butterbaking.com to help me figure out my conversions (it was incredibly helpful!). Here's my Americanozed version of the original recipe.

Cookie Ingredients:

7 TBS of soft butter

3/4 c + 1 TBS + 1/4 tsp powdered sugar (or a heaping 3/4 c.)

1/2 cup + 3 TBS + 1 1/2 tsp flour (or a scant 3/4 c.)

2-3 eggs worth of egg whites
Room temperature water

Chocolate or dark chocolate (I used 2 1/2 squares of almond bark, so maybe 3/4-1 c. chocolate chips worth)
Something to roll the cookies on (I used a pen).

*Choose whatever flavors you want for the filling. Raspberry would be yummy in this too!

Directions:

Mix together the butter and powdered sugar for 2 minutes. Mix in the flour, then add the egg whites one at a time. Mix until smooth. If your mixture looks like the picture below, it's too thick:Add water, 1 TBS at a time until the mixture is just thin enough to pour. Chill for at least 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Place parchment paper on a cookie sheet and spray with Pam. Using a spoon, pour 2 1/2 to 3 inch circles of batter on the prepared parchment paper. Only pour 4 cookies at a time (more than that will not give you time to roll them before they have cooled and hardened). Bake for 5-6 minutes. The edges will be golden brown.

Upon removing the cookies from the oven, immediately roll them around the pen (or whatever round object you're using) so there is a hollow in the center. Place them to the side to cool. If they try to unroll, place them with the "flap" on the bottom and brace them on either side (I put a cup on either side of the cookies that wanted to unroll, which was only a few of them really, you won't have to do this with all of them hopefully). Let the cool and set up.

Mix the filling ingredients until smooth. Scoop into a plastic bag, cut the corner, and squeeze the filling into the cooled cookies.

Melt the chocolate according to package instructions. I added about 1-2 tsp of shortening to my melted chocolate to make it a little more smooth and thin. Place a small pile of cocoa powder to the side. Dip half of each cookie in the chocolate and gently tap off the excess chocolate. Dip the end in the cocoa to resemble ash. Place on a flat surface to cool (I let mine cool on the now cool pan/parchment paper).

These were a gift for a friend who loves cigar boxes, so I found a fun cigar box at the local Antique Mall, cleaned it out, and used it at the gift box for the cookies. The cookies don't look exactly like cigars, and they don't look as good as the original cookies on the French site, but they tasted amazing and were a lot of fun to make!

This last Saturday I had the assignment to provide snacks for 100 people for our stake camp clinic. Our camp theme is "Embark" this year and each unit has a theme ship. Our YCLs ship is The Black Pearl, so I used the theme of pirates for the snacks. The menu was cheese sticks, grapes and carmel corn with water to drink. The sign says: "Aarggh! Be Best Mateys This Year at Camp! It worked very well. At least the girls thought it all was cute. Naturally there were a few fingertip sword fights with the plastic picks.

Thanks to Marquette and Cameron for naming the grapes! One can always go to them for a cute idea.